Chapter 36

I rolled the whole thing around in my mind all the way back. Half a dozen times I all but turned around and headed back to Ft. Lauderdale, with the idea of putting it to Arlene that we ought to get serious. But, I always convinced myself that the timing was all wrong to do something like that, with the racing season not far off. Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I was frustrated with the thought that I hadn't pushed her a little when I'd been with her. By the time I got back to Daytona Beach I wanted to be with a woman, and right about then I'd settle for just about any woman.

It was mid-afternoon when I got back to the motel in Daytona Beach. It turned out that Carnie was there, and he had two hillbilly girls in bed with him. They weren't the same girls as we'd had four years before, but there was little difference. "Sorry," I told him. "I'll leave you guys alone."

"Sorry, hell," he snorted. "I'm damn glad you're back. These two babes are about to fuck me to death. Help me out here, will ya?"

Well, hell, I thought. Arlene is three hundred miles away and it's pretty clear to me that there wasn't going to be anything happening with her anytime soon. "All right," I said. "Anything to help out a friend."

It wound up being a long night that got rid of a lot of my frustration. Carnie and I didn't cut anything like as wide a swath through the women this time as we had the last time but we had some good times over the next few days, mostly with girls that I was glad to see gone when they left. I know I felt uncomfortable about it, knowing Arlene was sitting down there in Ft. Lauderdale by herself, but since we didn't have any real commitment with each other I wondered if I should be feeling guilty or what.

By this time things were starting to get a little more interesting around the race track. I spent at least part of each day over there, just checking things out. Things had changed an awful lot since I'd been there back in 1951. There was still a pretty good variety of cars there, but they were a lot different, now. The Nashes and Hudsons and the other cars that had been so prominent in 1951 were still there, but they weren't front runners. This was the height of Carl Kiekhaefer's reign with his Chrysler 300s, and there was little question about which kind of car it was going to be, more of which Chrysler. They were still running on the old beach course and would for a few more years yet, but things had gotten a little more professional.

After a while I ran across Goober Buford, the guy whose car I'd driven for a bit back in '51. He was driving a Chrysler, and was expected to do well. Things had changed enough that there wasn't any chance that I was going to get to take a few laps in that thing, but we had a nice talk about the old days.

A little while later, I was more than a little surprised to come across Hap, who was planning on driving a '52 Oldsmobile he'd gotten some place. Junie and Buckshot were working with him on it, and he was doing pretty well. Hap and Junie had pretty well made up their minds to campaign the car around the south that summer, which meant that they weren't interested in coming back to drive for us, and I guess I was just as glad. Hap had pretty well thrown off the effects of his accident up in Schererville the previous summer, although he said on damp days he sometimes walked with a little bit of a limp. Buckshot was still making up his mind about whether he was going to come back, although he told me that he didn't plan on it unless he could drive the 27 car.

When race day rolled around, Frank, Carnie, and I watched it from the grandstands, with Vivian and a couple girls that Carnie had picked up somewhere. We made it through about three quarters of the race before we all got rather bored, and Carnie's two girls especially so. We went back to the motel, and I never saw Goober finish second in his Chrysler. I've always been a little sorry about that.

We'd planned to hang around for a couple days afterwards, but when Frank, Vivian, Carnie, and I talked it over the next morning we pretty well agreed that we'd done what we'd come to do in Florida, and that we might as well head back to Livonia and take our time about it. We were in the car twenty minutes later, heading north toward yet another season.

A couple of weeks before we were set to get back on the road again I got home from a particularly dull day of substituting to find Rocky waiting alone in the apartment for me. That was a little strange, and it had never happened before – with the hours we worked, I usually got home an hour or so before the rest of the guys, more if they'd decided to stop off and have a beer on the way. I figured he had to go somewhere or do something, so I didn't say anything except, "So how's it going today?"

"I've had better days," he sighed. "How about you?"

"I'll tell you what, today made me wish we were starting the season earlier, like we did last year," I told him. "I'm just plain counting the days. How about you?"

"To tell the truth, I'm not looking forward to it," he said, sounding a little resigned. "Mel, I'm thinking real hard about not going."

"Rocky, I've felt that way from time to time," I told him. "Mostly, I've learned to go and lie down until the feeling goes away."

"This is different," he said. "I know that sometimes it gets a little old being on the road all the time but I've always looked forward to it in the past. I'm not looking forward to it this year. I don't want to go."

"Ariel is leaning on you, I take it," I nodded, reading between the lines all I needed to.

"Not really," he shrugged. "We've, uh, we've gotten pretty close, and I don't want to leave her behind."

"You're afraid that she may not be here when we get back next fall," I replied softly.

"Yeah, that's about the size of it," he said. "Ariel, well, she's something special. I don't want to lose her."

I knew that Ariel was something special, all right. After all, I'd been in bed with her back at Hoss and Helen's wedding. She'd been a firecracker there and was a darn good looking woman. Rocky knew about that, of course, but it was something that we never talked about. "Is she making sounds about getting married?" I asked.

"Well, yeah," he said. "I mean, she hasn't come out and said anything, but she's hinted around about it. I don't think it's a bad idea, either. It's just that it's going to be her or going racing, it can't be both. I was over and talked to Dink's boss at the Buick place this afternoon. He needs someone, and he can put me on right away. I'm thinking real hard about it. It's just that, shit, I've been with Frank and Spud since the beginning. I wasn't the world's greatest driver, and hell, I never have been, but they've always been good to me. I hate like hell to have to just walk away and leave them hanging for a driver. Hell, Frank's got it hard enough finding guys this year as it is."

"So it comes down to Ariel or Frank, right?"

"Yeah, I guess," he nodded.

"I can't tell you what to do, Rocky," I said after thinking about it for a moment. "But ever since I ran into Frank back in Milwaukee that time, he's been hurting for drivers, so one more or less isn't going to make a whole lot of difference. So you have to ask yourself the question, is Ariel worth it? There are worse things in this life than coming home to a woman like her at the end of the day, and going back to an empty bed in some fleabag of a tourist court might be one of them."

"There is that," he said. "But damn, I hate to give up the racing. I really like it."

"So, big deal," I said. "Just because you're not on the road with us doesn't mean that you can't get yourself an old Ford and be a local racer one or two nights a week. You don't have to be traveling all over the damn country."

"Yeah, I suppose," he said, brightening a little. "Look, Mel, I know you're a little closer to Frank and Spud than the rest of us since you spent that time in the Army with them. They're good enough friends that I don't want to screw things up with them. How do you think they're going to take it if I were to tell them I'm not going this year?"

"If you're leaving for a good reason, I don't think they'll mind," I told him. "Hell, look at all the guys that have left over the last four years since I came aboard. They're going to be sorry to see you go, sure, but that doesn't mean that you're not going to go with their good wishes. I mean, hell, look at Hoss and Chick and Dink, they're still good friends and pitch in now and then when it's needed. There's no reason you can't do the same thing." I let out a sigh to give myself a little time to think about it, then went on. "Really, that's not the question you should be asking yourself," I told him. "What you need to be asking yourself is what is Ariel going to do if you decide to stay."

"What do you mean?" he frowned.

"Well, wouldn't you feel pretty goddamn silly if you decided to stay behind for her sake, and then she decides that one winter was long enough to look at your ugly face and shows you the door?"

"Yeah," he replied, thinking about it. "Yeah," he said again finally. "I guess I'd better go have a talk with her."

The truth was that I wasn't real sure what Frank intended to do for drivers anyway. The last time I'd talked with him he hadn't sounded real optimistic about it, although he'd always managed to put something together in the past. With it now a tossup whether Rocky would be going with us, the only drivers I knew about for sure were Pepper, Dewey, Arlene, and me. Skimp had been able to fill in several times in the past, but he was back at work at the Ford plant so now it seemed pretty unlikely that he would be going with us.